Discussion of current legal issues

A 2014 study in Public Administration Review, “The Impact of Public Officials’ Corruption on the Size and Allocation of U.S. State Spending,” looks at the impact of government corruption on states’ expenditures. The study was authored by Cheol Liu of the City University of Hong Kong and John L. Mikesell of Indiana University, Bloomington. Defining corruption as the “misuse of public office for private gain,” the authors note that public and private corruption can have a range of negative effects: lower-quality work, reduced economic productivity and higher levels of income inequality and poverty.

The study’s findings include:

Corruption and elevated state expenditures were found to be positively correlated. Over the period studied, if the 10 most corrupt states had been at the average level of corruption, they could have reduced their annual expenditures by $1,308 per capita, or 5.2% of the mean per-capita expenditure.

More-corrupt states tend to spend more on areas that are fertile ground for practices most conducive to corrupt practices such as bribery, kickbacks, extortion, nepotism and patronage. These include construction and highway projects, salaries and wages, borrowing, correction and police protection.

Construction projects find particular favor because they present a wealth of corruption opportunities: “First, construction involves large, complex, nonstandard activities, so the quality of construction can be very hard to assess. Second, domestic and international construction industries are dominated by a few monopolistic firms. Third, the industry is closely linked to the government. Governments have major roles as ‘clients, regulators, and owners’ of construction companies. It is very common to bribe government officials to gain or alter contracts and to circumvent regulations related to construction.” (As an example, in 2008 Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff and other construction firms paid $450 million to resolve a series of criminal and civil liabilities related to Boston’s “Big Dig” highway expansion.)

Given that highways make up a large part of U.S. infrastructure spending, states with higher levels of corruption tend to spend more on roads. The authors cite Census Bureau data indicating that in 2008, states spent $92 billion on construction projects, including highways. This constituted 81% of their total capital outlay that year, $113 billion. States with higher degrees of corruption also tend to borrow more, frequently for the capital, construction and highway projects that provide the greatest opportunity for private gain.

More-corrupt states tend to spend more on corrections and police protection in a self-reinforcing cycle: Government officials can advance their personal interests by maximizing state budgets for correctional facilities and services. Citizens are then more exposed to corruption, and this can increase their demand for prisons and police.

Government services not seen as potential sources of private gain tend to be neglected by corrupt officials, including elementary and secondary education, health services and hospitals. They suffer not only because favored projects divert scarce resources, but also when officials and private firms siphon off additional funds. “The harmful impact of corruption on education persists even after expenditures on education is divided into subcategories: elementary and secondary education and higher education. These results imply that public officials’ corruption reduces states’ investment in education overall.”

“The results of this article suggest that preventing public officials’ corruption and restraining spending induced by public corruption should accompany other efforts at fiscal constraint,” the researchers conclude. “Increases in states’ expenditures on capital, construction, highways and borrowing are not problematic in themselves…. However, policy makers should pay close attention that public resources are not used for private gains of the few but rather distributed effectively and fairly.”